Month: May 2010

May 8, 2010

New film by Rachel Leah Jones, for Adalah

The film “Targeted Citizen” (15 minutes), produced by filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones for Adalah, surveys discrimination against the Palestinian citizens of Israel. With the participation of experts Dr. Yousef Jabareen of the Technion and Dr. Khaled Abu Asbeh of the Van Leer Institute, as well as Adalah attorneys Sawsan Zaher, Abeer Baker and Hassan Jabareen, inequality in land and housing, employment, education and civil and political rights are eloquently addressed. These interviews are reinforced by the contrasting informality of on-the-street conversations conducted by Palestinian comic duo Shammas-Nahas and punctuated by the hard-hitting rhymes of Palestinian rap trio DAM. The film’s theme song “Targeted Citizen,” written and recorded by DAM especially for Adalah, tells it like it is without missing a beat.

US envoy George Mitchell in Mid-East talks push: BBC

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has met Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in an attempt to restart indirect talks.
The meetings come one day before the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) decides whether to proceed with talks.
Talks in March were delayed by a row over building in East Jerusalem. Washington has said it expects the so-called proximity talks within days.
Mr Abbas is to advise Mr Mitchell of the PLO decision later on Saturday.
Middle East peace talks have been stalled since 2008.
Shuttle diplomacy
In Jerusalem, President Peres told Mr Mitchell that Israel was committed to reaching a Middle East settlement, but stressed that the country’s security must be at the top of the agenda of any possible indirect talks.
Later on Friday, Mr Mitchell met Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and also Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni.
He then went to the West Bank to hold separate talks with Mr Abbas. No statements were made after the meeting.
The US envoy, who arrived in the region on Wednesday, has already seen Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice.
Mr Abbas has said he wants the backing of the PLO, due to meet on Saturday, before committing to the indirect talks.
After the Arab League backed Palestinian participation in the talks last Saturday, Mr Abbas said he did not “want to lose hope”.
The Palestinians pulled out of talks in March after an announcement that Israel had approved plans for new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
The move caused deep strain in Israeli-US relations.
The Palestinian Authority’s formal position is that it will not enter direct talks unless Israel completely halts building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In November, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank, under heavy US pressure.
But it considers areas within the Jerusalem municipality as its territory and thus not subject to the restrictions.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, although Palestinians want to establish their capital in the east of the city.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Israel needs a new nuclear policy: Haaretz Editorial

The expanse between excessive weaponry and disarmament is not a slippery slope. Israel should enter it.
The Security Council’s permanent members this week reiterated an old call to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the Middle East. The Arab states have no nuclear weapons – and when Iraq and Syria started developing them, the Israel Defense Forces attacked them. Therefore, this call is clearly directed at Israel, which is believed to possess such weapons, though its official position is that it only has a “nuclear option.”

The call was issued at a five-year Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, on the 40th anniversary of the treaty’s inauguration. It’s a sad celebration. North Korea has been making a mockery of the treaty for a decade and a half. Another member of the club, Iran, is developing nuclear weapons and challenging the council. Three states – India, Pakistan and Israel – are still refusing to join the NPT, which affords few privileges (such as using foreign nuclear material for domestic needs ) and numerous obligations (refraining from nuclear weapons, agreeing to supervision ).

India and Pakistan have even conducted nuclear tests and make no secret of possessing nuclear weapons. It may be for mutual deterrence, but there is no guarantee that the safety catch will remain on forever.

Egypt, which has always spearheaded demands for the region’s total nuclear disarmament, decided in the 1970s that it was incapable of taking Israel on in the nuclear arena. Anwar Sadat, who indicated when he came to Jerusalem that he chose peace with Israel in part because of the nuclear issue, took the “if we don’t have it, neither shall you” approach.

The peace agreement with Israel has not stopped Egypt from consistently demanding, for more than 30 years now, that Israel be disarmed of its alleged nuclear weapons. This demand is raised every autumn at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s annual conference in Vienna, and frequently in other international forums.

The Arab demand, and the world’s support for it, are nothing new. Nor is Israel’s response. Ever since the days of foreign minister Yigal Allon’s appearances at the UN General Assembly on behalf of Yitzhak Rabin’s first government, Israel has preferred saying “yes, but” to outright rejection. Yes, certainly, Israel would be pleased if a nuclear-free zone were established, but on condition that the region’s borders be defined so that it includes Iran (and Libya, and what about the nuclear weapons that may creep in from Pakistan? ), and that the region no longer be hostile.

In brief, if the Egyptians say that without disarmament there will be no peace, Israel says peace now, disarmament later. What Israel is prepared to give for peace is already a different issue.

However, the periodic demand for regional disarmament is different this time, on two counts: Israel describes the nuclear weapons Iran is expected to acquire as a threat to its survival, and U.S. President Barack Obama is passionately striving for a nuclear-free world, not merely region. In this situation, Israel must adopt a new policy – one that does not go as far as total and immediate disarmament, but does agree to freeze new nuclear activities.

The expanse between excessive weaponry and disarmament is not a slippery slope. Israel should enter it.

PLO convenes to discuss peace talks with Israel: The Independent

By Tom Perry, Reuters, Saturday, 8 May 2010
The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) convened today and was expected to approve indirect peace talks with Israel, clearing the way for the first negotiations in 18 months.

The PLO executive committee, meeting in Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, would approve a US proposal for indirect talks which will be mediated by US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, committee members said.
The United States has sought to revive the peace process, calling the Middle East conflict a “vital national security interest”. However many doubt whether the latest US effort can succeed where years of diplomacy have failed.
The United States proposed the indirect talks as a way to break an impasse over Jewish settlement construction on Israeli-occupied land where the Palestinians aim to establish a state alongside Israel.

The United States said last week it expected the indirect negotiations, known as “proximity talks”, to move forward before Mitchell’s departure from the region, scheduled for tomorrow.
Mitchell is set to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas later today.
“The (PLO) executive committee will approve proximity talks but we are against it,” said committee member Bassem al-Salhi of the People’s Party. The PLO is dominated by the Fatah faction led by Abbas. The Arab League last week approved four months of indirect negotiations.

Continue reading May 8, 2010

May 7, 2010

On Israel, Jews and Leaders Often Disagree: The New York Times

Stephen McGee for The New York Times
FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. — Criticizing Israel has long been the equivalent of touching a third rail in many Jewish families and friendships, relegating disagreements to a conversational demilitarized zone where only the innocent and foolhardy go.
Bob Maggid listens to a discussion about Israel in Farmington Hills. Many Jews have differing views on Israeli policies.
“You cannot really engage in that conversation,” said Phillip Moore, a teacher in this Detroit suburb who has embraced strong opinions on many topics in his life — on politics, education, even religion — but avoids the subject of Israel at gatherings of his Jewish relatives.

“You raise a question about the security forces or the settlements and you are suddenly being compared to a Holocaust denier,” said Mr. Moore, 62. “It’s just not a rational discussion, so I keep quiet.”

But the recent tension between the Obama administration and the Israeli government over the stalled Middle East peace process has put the questions underlying those long-avoided family discussions directly in the public spotlight. They have raised serious questions about whether the traditional leadership of the American Jewish world is fully supported by the mass of American Jews.

The issues arose last month when American officials openly rebuked Israel over the announcement of new housing plans in east Jerusalem, and are likely to grow as indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians, mediated by the Obama administration, resume this week. President Obama, working to ease those tensions, met on Tuesday with the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who had criticized the administration in an advertisement last month.

Many other prominent Jews, representing the conservative organizational leadership that has been the dominant voice of the Jewish community for decades, have also recently criticized the Obama administration’s pressure on Israel. Some have even accused the White House of sabotaging the foundations of the Jewish state.

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York spoke for many stalwart Israel backers last Sunday when he told an angry crowd of 500 gathered outside the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan, in a videotaped statement, that President Obama’s demand for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem was nothing less than an orchestrated effort “to undermine the legitimacy of the state of Israel.”

But while those voices have been strong and their message unmistakable, a newly outspoken wing of Israel supporters has begun to challenge the old-school reflexive support of the country’s policies, suggesting that one does not have to be slavish to Israeli policies to love Israel.

“Most Jews have mixed feelings about Israel,” said Rabbi Tamara Kolton of the Birmingham Temple, a secular humanistic congregation in Farmington Hills. “They support Israel, but it’s complicated. Until now, you never heard from those people. You heard only from the organized ones, the ones who are 100 percent certain: ‘we’re right, they’re wrong.’”

In the 2008 election, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Mr. Obama, and surveys have suggested that most continue to back his policies.

In a survey taken after the diplomatic skirmish of March, the American Jewish Committee — the heart of the traditional mainstream — found little change in the level of Jewish support for Mr. Obama’s handling of relations with Israel. The survey found that 55 percent approved of his handling of Israeli relations, compared with 54 percent last year. (His disapproval rating rose five points, to 37 percent.)

Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder of a Washington lobby known as J Street, the latest of several organizations representing the voice of liberal Jews who support Israel but not all its policies, said many people have long felt ignored or silenced by the pro-Israel establishment in the United States.

“People are tired of being told that you are either with us or against us,” he said. “The majority of American Jews support the president, support the two-state solution and do not feel that they have been well represented by organizations that demand obedience to every wish of the Israeli government. If you had taken their word for it, Obama should have gotten 12 percent of the Jewish vote. But he got 80. That should say something.”

Within the vast spectrum of opinion, though, American Jews continue to have strong attachments to Israel, and the recent tensions have produced intense, often angry, debate. The rancor led delegates at the annual convention of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, an umbrella community relations group that includes almost all major American Jewish organizations, to adopt a resolution in February calling for a halt to “a level of uncivility, particularly over issues pertaining to Israel, that has not been witnessed in recent memory.”

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, predicted that Mr. Obama’s approval ratings among Jews would soon reflect what he called “a deep distress” over his approach.

“People are angry,” he said. “Americans do not want peace shoved down the throats of the Israelis.”

But Professor Steven M. Cohen, a sociologist at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan who co-wrote a study last year charting a steep decline in attachment to Israel among younger Jews, said the younger and liberal-leaning are frustrated at being labeled “anti-Israel” or even anti-Semitic for expressing opposition to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories.

General ‘tried to cover up truth about death of Rachel Corrie’: The Independernt

Israeli war hero accused of suppressing testimony that could reveal what really happened to Gaza activist
By Ben Lynfield, Friday, 7 May 2010
Seven years after the American activist Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza, evidence has emerged which appears to implicate Israel’s Gaza commander at the time, in an attempt to obstruct the official investigation into her death.

The alleged intervention of Major-General Doron Almog, then head of Israel’s southern command, is documented in testimony taken by Israeli military police a day after Ms Corrie was killed on March 16, 2003. The hand written affidavit, seen by The Independent, was submitted as evidence during a civil law suit being pursued by the Corrie family against the state of Israel.

Ms Corrie, who was 23 when she died, was critically wounded when a bulldozer buried her with sandy soil near the border between Gaza and Egypt. The American, wearing a fluorescent orange jacket and carrying a megaphone, was among a group of volunteers from the anti-occupation International Solidarity Movement who over a period of three hours on that day had sought to block the demolition by Israel of Palestinian homes.

The Israeli military has maintained that its troops were not to blame for the killing of Ms Corrie and that the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her. It accused Ms Corrie and the ISM of behaviour that was “illegal, irresponsible and dangerous”. Three days after Ms Corrie’s death, the US state department announced that the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had promised the US President George Bush that the Israeli government would undertake a “thorough, credible and transparent investigation”.

But according to a military police investigator’s report which has now emerged, the “commander” of the D-9 bulldozer was giving testimony when an army colonel dispatched by Major-General Almog interrupted proceedings and cut short his evidence. The military police investigator wrote: “At 18:12 reserve Colonel Baruch Kirhatu entered the room and informed the witness that he should not convey anything and should not write anything and this at the order of the general of southern command.”

The commander was a reservist named Edward Valermov. He was in the bulldozer with its driver. In his testimony before he was ordered to stop, he told military police investigators that he had not seen Ms Corrie before she was wounded. Alice Coy, a former ISM volunteer activist who was near Ms Corrie during the incident said in an affidavit to the court that “to the best of my knowledge the bulldozer driver could see Rachel while pushing earth over her body.”

Hussein Abu Hussein, a lawyer for the Corrie family, said Major-General Almog’s alleged intervention blocked the possible emergence of evidence that could have determined whether Mr Valermov’s assertion that he did not see Ms Corrie was reasonable. “Do I believe him? Of course not. There is no doubt this was manslaughter,” Mr Abu Hussein said. “First of all we claim the state is responsible for the death of Rachel. And secondly we claim that the investigation was not professional.”

“When you, the state of Israel, fail as an authority to perform your function of having a credible investigation, when your standard falls from reasonable, objective standards than you have caused evidentiary damage,” Mr Abu Hussein said.

Contacted by The Independent, Major-General Almog, a hero in Israel for his role in the 1976 raid to rescue hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, denied ordering the bulldozer commander to desist from testifying. In 2005, the General narrowly escaped arrest in Britain on a war crimes charge for allegedly ordering the destruction in 2002 of 50 civilian homes in Rafah, where Ms Corrie was later killed. Major-General Almog was tipped off about the warrant and did not disembark at Heathrow, returning instead to Israel on the El Al flight.

Mr Valermov said in his testimony that the bulldozers, manned by two people, were ordered to continue their work despite the presence of the ISM protesters. He said that troops in an armoured personnel carrier threw stun grenades, used tear gas and fired shots towards the ground to scare the protesters away. “It didn’t help and therefore we decided to continue the work with all possible delicateness on the orders of the company commander” he said.

The testimony was interrupted after Mr Valermov said the driver of the bulldozer, named only as Yevgeny, said he did not know if Ms Corrie had been harmed by the shovel of the D-9. “It was only when we moved the D-9 backwards that I saw her. The woman was lying in a place where the instrument had not reached. As soon as we saw the harmed woman we returned to the central corridor, stood and waited for orders.” The soldier’s last statement before the order to stop speaking was: “My job was to guide. The driver cannot guide himself because his field of vision is not large.”

Another army document strongly suggests that Major-General Almog opposed the military police investigation. Dated 18 March 2003, a military police investigator petitioning a judge for permission to conduct an autopsy on Ms Corrie’s body said that “we arrived only today because there was an argument between the general of southern command and the military advocate general about whether to open an investigation and under what circumstances.” The judge granted the request provided the autopsy would be done in the presence of a US diplomat as the Corrie family requested. But the inquest was carried out by Israel’s chief pathologist without any US official being there, in apparent violation of the judge’s ruling.

Major-General Almog denied halting Mr Valermov’s testimony. “I never gave such an order, I don’t know such a document. I conducted my own investigation, I don’t remember what I found. There were 12,000 terrorist incidents when I was general in charge of southern command. I finished seven years ago, if they want to invite me [to testify] they know the address. I certainly didn’t disrupt an investigation, this is nonsense. In all of my service I never told anyone not to testify.”

Asked if he gave an order to harm foreign activists interfering with the army’s work, Major-General Almog responded: “What are you talking about? You don’t know what a general in charge of command is. The general in charge of command has 100,000 soldiers. What are you talking about?”

Moshe Negbi, legal commentator for the state-run Voice of Israel radio, said of Major-General Almog’s interdiction: “If a commander prevents a witness from testifying then it is disruption of an investigation, a criminal offence whose penalty is three years imprisonment.”

Craig Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s father, said the alleged intervention in Valermov’s testimony was “outrageous.”

“When you see someone in that position taking those steps you not only have to be outraged, you have to ask why is he covering up, what has he done that he needs to take these steps to cover it up?”

An Israel Defense Forces spokesman said: “Any military police investigations are completely independent and cannot be influenced by outside sources.” The Israeli state attorneys handling the case declined to be interviewed. The trial is due to resume in September.

Rachel’s nightmare scenario
Before she became a political symbol, Rachel Corrie was an American student on a study-abroad programme. A member of a middle-class family from Olympia, Washington, she was attending college locally when she travelled to Gaza with the intention of initiating a twin-city project between Olympia and Rafah.

Arriving in Gaza in January 2003, she linked up with the International Solidarity Movement, and spent the next two months as an activist. In the weeks before her death she wrote a series of emails home to her friends and family that detailed her impressions of life in Gaza. “I have bad nightmares about tanks and bulldozers,” she told her mother. “I’m witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I’m really scared… This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop.”

The emails, which later inspired a play that appeared in London but was cancelled in New York and Toronto, end with an exchange with her father. “I am afraid for you, and I think I have reason to be,” he wrote. “But I’m also proud of you – very proud… But I’d just as soon be proud of somebody else’s daughter.”

Corrie died on 16 March 2003. Like the death of the British activist Tom Hurndall in similar circumstances a year later, it prompted an international outcry about Israel’s deeds in the Palestinian territories.

May 5, 2010

Obama and Iran, by Carlos Latuff

EDITOR: The Success of the BDS campaign is getting to Israel’s guts!

The following hysterical article is evidence not just of the state of irrationality that Israeli society and its elites are now in, but also very clear evidence of the success of the campaign, and all those who tols us for years that it cannot succeed (including our great friend Chomsky) should now seriously rethink their positions and join the BDS camp!

Break the Palestinian boycott: Haaretz

By Karni Eldad
The Mishor Adumim industrial zone in the West Bank is home to a cosmetics plant that sells 70 percent of its products to Palestinians. Recently, however, there has been a slight turnaround in relations between the factory and its customers. The Palestinian Authority ruled − in a presidential order, not the small-scale campaign of a few − to stop buying Israeli products manufactured east of the Green Line.

How is such an order enforced? Simple. The life of the factory sales manager is threatened, and he is then given an offer he can’t refuse: sell the factory at a ludicrous price, and we’ll transfer it to PA control, because we won’t be buying your products in any case.
Those who silently stood by as Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad burned Israeli goods made in the West Bank simply accepted the presidential decree. Moreover, the PA recently established a “National Honor Fund” to finance its boycott activities, to which it injects $150,000 a month. Whence the money? International donations meant to support political institutions.

Israel remained silent last month when the so-called “committee against distributing settlement goods” confiscated and destroyed 7.5 tons of watermelons grown in West Bank fields. Israel stays mum when the Arabs work to impose an economic embargo on settlement products, and when the PA imposes the same on Israeli mobile phone companies, which are not centered in the West Bank. It is indeed remarkable that the cellular boycott has been put in place exactly when the son of a high-ranking PA official is launching a company that will distribute the same services.

Amid the presidential order on settlement-made goods, Palestinians have been forbidden to work in the factories producing these goods or in construction in settlements. For now, the order applies only to new workers, but veteran employees have been offered one month’s pay from the PA as an incentive to quit.

In the wake of the accursed Oslo Accords, the 1994 Paris Protocol was signed, establishing interim economic ties between Israel and the PA. The boycott against settlement merchandise is a clear violation of this agreement, by which both sides pledged not to undermine the other’s economy.

The same agreement also determined customs and tax issues between Israel and the Palestinians. When a Palestinian individual or company imports merchandise from abroad, Israel collects customs taxes and transfers them to PA coffers. In total, more than $1 billion is collected annually. Reason dictates that in the case of such a flagrant violation of the Paris Protocol by the Palestinians, we should collect the money lost by Israeli companies due to the boycott by recouping it from customs money we transferred to the Palestinians. Such a move requires no law, only a modicum of national honor − and it’s a step that could bring the economic embargo to an immediate end. At a recent meeting of the Knesset Finance Committee, Manufacturers Association President Shraga Brosh − hardly viewed as a staunch rightist − proposed another solution: barring the export of Palestinian goods from Israeli ports.

With Israeli manufacturers facing closure in the face of a Palestinian presidential order, I would expect to hear an outcry from lawmakers from every hue of the political spectrum. The Palestinians’ blatant violation of the Paris Protocol is an affront, but silence in the face of it is a crime.

UK ‘blocking’ Mossad return to London: The Guardian

Official reportedly prevented from taking up embassy post after Israel refuses to commit itself not to misuse British passports

The father of Palestinian militant Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was assassinated in Dubai, with his photograph. Israel has never admitted any role in the killing Photograph: Hatem Moussa/AP

Britain has refused to allow Israel’s Mossad secret service to send a representative back to the country’s London embassy following the row over the killing of a Hamas operative by agents using forged UK passports.

Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported yesterday that the Foreign Office is digging in its heels because Israel is refusing to commit itself not to misuse British passports in future clandestine operations.

Neither Britain nor Israel gave any details of the embassy official who was ordered to leave the country in March after an investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency showed that the Mossad was behind the passport theft.

But the official was understood to be an intelligence officer who was known to the UK authorities and worked as official liaison with Britain’s MI6. There was no suggestion the officer was personally involved in the passports affair.

Israel has never admitted any role in February’s Dubai assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was described as a key figure in smuggling Iranian weapons into the Gaza Strip on behalf of the Palestinian Islamist movement. It has abstained from signing any material that might be construed as a confession.

Britain had made clear in public statements and private meetings with the Israelis that it expected formal guarantees that there would be no repeat of the passport cloning. The real documents belonged to Britons living in Israel.

Forged or stolen Irish, Australian, French and German passports were also used by the hit squad, whose operation – including the use of elaborate disguises – was extensively recorded by CCTV cameras in the emirate.

Israel conspicuously refrained from retaliating for the expulsion of the Mossad officer, apparently accepting that it was no more than a slap on the wrist before a return to business as usual.

The Mossad and MI6 are known to have a close working relationship especially over terrorism – despite political differences over the peace process, settlements and the Palestinians between the UK and Israeli governments. Iran’s nuclear programme is likely to be another high-priority issue of common concern.

Yediot reported that Israeli security officials were concerned about the breakdown in relations between the two agencies. “It is estimated that the affair will only be resolved, if at all, after this week’s UK general elections,” the paper said.

The Foreign Office said it had not been approached by the Israelis about a replacement for the expelled official. “However we look to Israel to rebuild the trust we believe is required for the full and open relationship we would like,” said a spokesman. “We have asked for specific assurances from Israel, which would clearly be a positive step towards rebuilding that trust. Any Israeli request for the diplomat to be replaced would be considered against the context of these UK requests.”

Israel yet to replace diplomat expelled in passport row: BBC

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in his hotel room in Dubai on 19 January
Israel is yet to replace a diplomat expelled after forged British passports were used in the killing of a Hamas leader, it has emerged.
The Foreign Office said no request had been made to replace the official, but added that “specific assurances” would be sought from Israel if one was made.
The Israeli Embassy in London refused to comment on the situation.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai in January, allegedly by Israeli agents using forged foreign passports.
It is believed the fake passports – 12 of them British – were used in the plot to murder Mr Mabhouh, the founder of Hamas’s military wing, in his hotel room in Dubai on 19 January.
Dubai officials said they were “99% certain” that agents from Mossad, the Israeli secret service, were behind the killing.

We look to Israel to rebuild the trust we believe is required for the full and open relationship we would like
Foreign Office
The names and details on the UK passports used by eight of the 12 suspects belonged to British-Israeli citizens living in Israel – all of whom have denied involvement in Mr Mabhouh’s murder.
Their passports had been copied and new photographs inserted.
During the ensuing diplomatic row, in March, Foreign Secretary David Miliband said there were “compelling reasons” to believe Israel was responsible for the forgeries.
He said the misuse of British passports was “intolerable”.
Israel’s ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, said he was “disappointed”, but Israel confirmed there would be no tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsion.
Israel has previously said there is no proof it was behind the killing at a Dubai hotel.
The name of the expelled diplomat has not been released.
‘Specific assurances’
Several newspapers have reported that the person expelled was a Mossad representative and claimed that UK authorities are now preventing Israel from replacing the individual until it agrees not to use British passports in the same way again.
The Foreign Office said: “We have had no approach from the Israelis about a replacement. However we look to Israel to rebuild the trust we believe is required for the full and open relationship we would like.
“We have asked for specific assurances from Israel, which would clearly be a positive step towards rebuilding that trust. Any Israeli request for the diplomat to be replaced would be considered against the context of these UK requests.”
Dubai police said forensic tests showed Mabhouh was drugged with a quick-acting muscle relaxant and then suffocated.
Earlier reports had said he may have been strangled or killed by a massive electric shock.

US envoy George Mitchell meets Israel PM Netanyahu: BBC

“Proximity talks” were meant to have begun, but the start has been delayed
US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before the start of indirect talks with the Palestinians.
The three-hour meeting in Jerusalem was described as “good and productive” by the US state department.
But no announcements were made and Israeli officials have said the two are to meet again on Thursday.
Mr Mitchell is due to meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday in Ramallah.
The meeting with Mr Netanyahu had been planned as the start of “proximity talks” but the Palestine Liberation Organisation has still to agree to them.
The PLO said it would meet on Saturday to finally decide if talks can proceed.
Mr Abbas has said the talks need to immediately grapple with the toughest issues at the heart of the conflict.
He said first on the agenda should be the borders of a future Palestinian state.
But the issue, connected to the building of Jewish-only neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, has been a stumbling block.
The talks were delayed in March by a row which strained Israeli-US relations.
The Palestinians pulled out after an announcement that Israel had approved plans for new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden.
Earlier Obama administration adviser David Axelrod said the issue of Jerusalem would come at the end of the programme for talks.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, although Palestinians want to establish their capital in the east of the city.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Continue reading May 5, 2010

May 4, 2010

Targeting Iran nuclear program, by Carlos Latuff

US envoy visits Israel for ‘indirect’ negotiations: The Independent

By Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, in Jerusalem
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace envoy arrived in Tel Aviv yesterday for expected indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks but Israel voiced doubt about any breakthrough without direct negotiations.

Hours before the US envoy, George Mitchell, flew into Israel, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, conferred in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh about the upcoming US-mediated negotiations. Mr Obama’s peace efforts received a boost on Saturday when Arab states approved four months of “proximity talks”, whose expected start in March was delayed by Israel’s announcement of a settlement project on occupied land near Jerusalem.
An Israeli Defence Ministry strategist Amos Gilad said on Israel Radio that the indirect negotiations would begin on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear when the envoy would hold talks with the Palestinian side. The executive committee of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to meet only on Saturday to give the formal nod to start the negotiations.

The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor described indirect talks as “a strange affair” after face-to-face peace negotiations stretching back 16 years.
There have been no direct talks for the past 18 months, a period that has included Israel’s Gaza war, the election of a right-wing Israeli government and entrenched rule in the Gaza Strip by Hamas Islamists opposed to the US peace efforts.

“I think it is clear to everyone that real talks are direct talks, and I don’t think there is a chance of a significant breakthrough until the direct talks begin,” Mr Meridor said.
“The talks will be held. The envoy, Mr Mitchell, will talk to us, to them. But the more we hasten to arrive at direct talks, the more we will be able to address the heart of the matter.”

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Mr Abbas, said the negotiations would show whether the Israeli government was serious about peace and “test the sincerity” of the Obama administration in pursuing Palestinian statehood.
“The truth is we are not in need of negotiations. We are in need of decisions by the Israeli government. This is the time for decisions more than it is the time for negotiations,” Mr Rdainah said.

In an interview published on Sunday in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam, Mr Abbas said Mr Obama had given a commitment he would not allow “any provocative measures” by either side. Mr Abbas has long insisted Israel freeze Jewish settlement building before any negotiations resume, and he had rejected as insufficient a temporary construction moratorium that Mr Netanyahu ordered in the occupied West Bank last November.

EDITOR: Even the Right has noticed…

Moshe Arens might be right-wing, but stupid he is not. He admits some of the facts that others in the Israeli elite seems to be denying at all cost.

Let’s stop pretending: Haaretz

The administration in Washington is trying to force on Israel a peace settlement with the Palestinians.
By Moshe Arens
Tags: Israel US Israel news Middle East peace
It is almost a year now that a certain ritual has marked the public discourse between Washington and Jerusalem. Israel gets a good slap in the face and a few days later someone in Washington announces that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is rock-solid. The Israeli prime minister is demeaned in Washington and a day later he declares that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is firm as ever.

Anybody who has been involved in fostering the U.S.-Israeli relationship over the years, so important to both countries, knows that things are not as they have been for the past 50 years. The relationship, which on occasion is being described in Washington as “unshakable and unbreakable,” has for the past year been shaken up quite a bit. The administration in Washington is trying to force on Israel a peace settlement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a settlement that would involve Israel withdrawing to the 1949 armistice lines that were established after it repelled the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, which were attempting to destroy the newborn state.

They want to set the clock back, seemingly oblivious of the many wars and acts of terror that were launched against Israel in the years since then, the serious threats that are being directed against Israel at present, the dramatic changes that have taken place in the past 61 years, and the Jewish people’s internationally recognized rights to their ancient homeland. This bitter medicine needs to be taken by the people of Israel, it is argued, because it serves the interests of the United States, and in addition, the administration in Washington believes that it is also good for Israel.

For many years the differences between the United States and Israel were discussed in intimate forums and not taken public, in the common realization that venting in public the inevitable differences even among the best of friends would only harm the interests of both countries and give comfort and encouragement to their common enemies. Not since Dwight Eisenhower demanded that David Ben-Gurion withdraw the Israel Defense Forces from the Sinai and the Gaza Strip in 1957 has the White House openly challenged Israel. Now, the administration in Washington has no compunction about publicly airing its displeasure with Israel.

The recent visit of the U.S. vice president and the routine approval during his stay by a local planning body of construction plans in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem was turned into an “insult to the United States.” It was followed by an angry telephone call by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a subsequent attack on Israel in Clinton’s appearance on U.S. television.

In the interim, soothing words were heard from Washington until Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, where he was duly humiliated. Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist close to the White House, reminded Israel in a recent interview of the generosity of the United States in granting Israel $3 billion annually for military assistance while America contends with a severe economic crisis. What for years was seen in Washington and Jerusalem as assistance that served the interests of both countries is now being depicted as largesse for which Israel needs to express its gratitude by accepting American demands.

The Netanyahu government has chosen to act as if nothing has changed, and that the occasional signs of displeasure coming from Washington can be appeased by minor or temporary Israeli concessions. The result seems to be the opposite. The Israeli government is seen in Washington as disingenuous and attempting to outsmart the White House.

The time has come to stop pretending. Whatever chance that may exist to conduct productive negotiations with Abbas is being hampered by the demands being made on Israel by Washington. They only provide excuses for Abbas to refuse to enter serious negotiations until these demands are met. He cannot be expected to be less of a Palestinian than U.S. President Barack Obama. While objective difficulties exist in any case because of Hamas’ control of Gaza and Abbas’ tenuous position in Judea and Samaria, outside pressure only makes things more difficult. Peace cannot be imposed. There is little doubt that the administration in Washington will learn this lesson sooner or later.

US envoy Mitchell returns to Middle East: BBC

George Mitchell is back in the region but it is not clear when talks will start
US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has returned to the region, attempting to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Israeli media say the proximity talks will resume on Wednesday.
However, Palestinian leaders are said to require the backing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which will not meet until Saturday.
The Palestinian Authority has refused to attend the indirect proximity talks mediated by Mr Mitchell since March.
These were knocked off course by an announcement that Israel had approved plans for new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden. The move caused deep strain in Israeli-US relations. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled since 2008.
Constructive talks
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak.
They spoke for 90 minutes in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
An Israeli government statement said the talks had been “constructive” and had taken place “in a good atmosphere”.
During their meeting, Mr Netanyahu and Mr Mubarak “reviewed Egyptian and international efforts to prepare the ground for the indirect talks aimed at a two-state solution,” the Egyptian news agency Mena said.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said they had discussed “renewing the peace process and other regional and bilateral issues”.
Mr Netanyahu later discussed the peace efforts with US President Barack Obama in a telephone call, officials said.
According to the White House Mr Obama stressed the importance of “substantive” proximity talks and the need for direct contacts to start soon.
Mending ties
The Palestinian Authority’s formal position is that it will not enter direct talks unless Israel completely halts building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In November, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank, under heavy US pressure. But it considers areas within the Jerusalem municipality as its territory and thus not subject to the restrictions.
But reports suggest that an unofficial slowdown of approvals for major projects in East Jerusalem may have been instigated by Mr Netanyahu in an attempt to help mend relations with the US strained by March’s announcement.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, although Palestinians want to establish their capital in the east of the city.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.

Continue reading May 4, 2010

May 3, 2010

EDITOR: The Pot Calling the Kettle Black…

The report below speaks of the amazing pervasiveness of abuse of Israeli soldiers by their officers. I tend to believe this report, and one can only wonder how much more pervasive is the abuse and torture of the Palestinian population, who do not have an Ombudsman to go to, and whose complaints are, as a matter of course, always dismissed. An army, a country, a culture based on abuse, torture, theft and barbarity.

IDF report reveals serious abuse of soldiers by commanding officers: Haaretz

Annual report of the IDF Ombudsman reveals the army received 6,100 complaints from soldiers, 60% of which were justified.
The annual report of the IDF Ombudsman, which was served to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday, has revealed serious cases of mistreatment of soldiers inside the Israel Defense Forces.

The report included cases of abuse and humiliation of IDF soldiers by their commanders and inadequate medical treatment in IDF medical clinics.
The Ombudsman report revealed that 6,100 complaints were lodged by soldiers against their commanders in 2009, a decrease of 400 complaints from 2008. Of the 6,100 complaints lodged, 60 percent of the complaints were found to have merit by the IDF Ombudsman

In one incident cited in the report, a commander in one of the IDF’s combat units attacked a soldier who wasn’t feeling well by forcefully kicking him in the chest. The IDF Ombudsman found that the battalion commander knew of the incident but responded apathetically and only chose to investigate the incident two months after the fact, following inquiries by the IDF Ombudsman.

“Unfortunately, the regiment commander did not take any steps to correct the situation until the office of the Ombudsman intervened. This type of response shows his soldiers weakness and disinterest, and surely isn’t conducive to trusting relations between soldiers and their commanders,” the report read.

Another case revealed a suicidal soldier who told the deputy commander of his company that he was having a hard time in his post, and threatened to harm himself if he wasn’t transferred to a different post. The deputy commander then handed him a knife and said: “Come on, let’s see if you are able to hurt yourself.” The soldier then proceeded to cut his hand with the knife. The Ombudsman condemned the mistreatment of the soldier and said that several other similar incidents occurred.

The report also revealed defective medical services offered to soldiers.  “Unfortunately, the reality on the ground shows that soldiers are made to wait for lengthy periods of time for general and expert doctor appointments,” the report read.

The report found that soldiers typically waited between two to three weeks for a routine checkup, and in cases of emergency, soldiers would wait for many hours.

One combat soldier with a viral infection had to wait three months to see a doctor and four months to receive medication for his infection.

In another incident, a soldier was brought to the military clinic after getting bitten by a yellow scorpion. Even though orders obligate the doctor to refer the patient to the nearest hospital, the doctor instructed the paramedic to give the soldier an infusion and painkillers because the doctor was sleeping and didn’t want to get out of bed.

An IDF spokesperson said in a response that the IDF had received the report and is committed to studying its contents carefully, learning the necessary lessons and to making up for wrongdoings.

Closed Zone: New Animation film

Despite declarations that it has “disengaged” from the Gaza Strip, Israel maintains control of the Strip’s overland border crossings, territorial waters, and air space. This includes substantial, albeit indirect, control of the Rafah Crossing.

During the past 18 months, Israel tightened its closure of Gaza, almost completely restricting the passage of goods and people both to and from the Strip.

These policies punish innocent civilians with the goal of exerting pressure on the Hamas government, violating the rights of 1.5 million people who seek only to live ordinary lives – to be reunited with family, to pursue higher education, to receive quality medical treatment, and to earn a living.

The effects of the closure were particularly harsh during the military operation of Dec. 2008 – Jan. 2009. For three weeks, Gaza residents had nowhere to flee to escape the bombing.

Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement calls on the State of Israel to fully open Gaza’s crossings and to allow the real victims of the closure – 1.5 million human beings – the freedom of movement necessary to realize their dreams and aspirations.

EDITOR: Haaretz and JCall

I have reported few days ago here about JCall, and it is interesting to read Haaretz enthusiastic reception of their call. This is even more interesting in the light of the unstinting support many of those signatories have given Israel over many decades… that many now relaise that the Occupation game is up, and that it is their civic duty to say so, is a measure of the crisis Israel is finding itself in, though it hardly seems to realise this fully.

A welcome Jewish voice: Haaretz Editorial

Like the members of the American Jewish lobby J Street, the people behind JCall don’t believe that automatic support of Israeli policy serves Israel’s true interests.
JCall, a new leftist European Jewish group, released over the weekend a petition signed by more than 3,000 Jews calling for an end to the occupation and Israeli expansion in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The signatories, including important French philosophers Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, say the settlement policy undermines prospects for peace with the Palestinians based on a two-state solution. They express fear for the future of Israel as a Jewish, democratic and ethical state and are concerned by the global delegitimization campaign against Israel.

Like the members of the American Jewish lobby J Street, the people behind JCall don’t believe that automatic support of Israeli policy – which advocates, for instance, Jewish construction in East Jerusalem – serves Israel’s true interests.
Just as there was criticism of J Street in the United States, the veteran Jewish organizations in Europe have borne down on the new initiative, arguing that the petition will serve Israel’s enemies. And just as Israel’s Information and Diaspora Ministry expects Israeli tourists to defend the government’s settlement policy on their trips abroad, the critics are demanding that intellectuals and ethical people in the Diaspora should be disingenuous.

It is to be hoped that the Israeli government does not join the attack on JCall. During the latest crisis with the U.S. administration, Prime Minister Benjamim Netanyahu spared no effort in getting Jewish public figures like Elie Wiesel to join the battle against pressure for a construction freeze in East Jerusalem.

Those who recruit Jews from the right to support their policies must honor the right of the Jewish left to express its views. The contribution of Jewish peace activists in Europe is a suitable response to the damage that members of the Netanyahu government, mainly Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, are doing to Israel’s interests there.

The violent conflict between Israel and its neighbors and the suspension of peace talks have contributed to Diaspora Jewish communities’ increasing alienation from Israel. That trend is particularly noticeable among the youth.

The fact that thousands of Jews around the world, including prominent intellectuals, are advocating an end to nearly 43 years of malignant occupation is welcome news. Let’s hope that the voices of Israel’s friends in Paris, London and Brussels will be heard in Jerusalem.

Strenger than Fiction / Jewish liberals from all nations, unite: Haaretz

Diaspora Jews around the world are realizing the time has come to reject the right’s dictate that being pro-Israel means that you need to support the policies of Israeli governments, no matter what they do.
By Carlo Strenger
The failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the onset of the Second Intifada have in stages swung the pendulum of Israeli politics to the right to the current government that includes Avigdor Lieberman – one of the most anti-democratic ministers Israel has ever had, who is moving Israel ever closer to the brink of total international isolation – and the Shas Party whose main impact is to push construction in East Jerusalem and the settlements.

This has been reflected in an amazing distortion in the Jewish voice from the Diaspora, primarily the U.S., in the last decade. Judging from the media presence, you might think that most Jews are right-leaning and support Israel’s settlement policy and foot-dragging over ending the occupation. But this has never been true: most Diaspora Jews, including most of American Jewry, is committed to liberalism.

Now the pendulum is swinging back. Diaspora Jews around the world are beginning to realize that the time has come to reject the right’s dictate that being pro-Israel means that you need to support the policies of Israeli governments, no matter what they do; that the Jewish right represents a small minority of the Jewish people. Caring about friends and family doesn’t mean that we do not criticize them, when we believe that they are harming themselves. In caring for somebody’s wellbeing, we are often required to make clear that they are going the wrong way. Hence Liberal Jews in the Diaspora firmly stand by Israel while trenchantly criticizing the occupation and settlements.

This week a delegation of J Street representatives visited Israel. They were hosted by President Shimon Peres, and they heard from central Israeli politicians like Labor MK Matan Vilnai and from opposition leader Tzipi Livni that ending the occupation is Israel’s most urgent task to safeguard it as the democratic state of the Jewish people. The Netanyahu government’s attempt to brand J Street as outside the legitimate Jewish discourse has failed, and finally, after refusing to attend J Street’s first convention, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren met them a few weeks ago.

The movement initiated by J Street is now joined by the European JCall, which includes leading Jewish intellectuals like Bernard-Henri Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, and which will present its message to the European Parliament today. Their name is short for the Jewish European Call to Reason. This development is doubly important: first, because it gives a voice to the majority of European Jews, who, while caring for Israel, are liberal in orientation. Second: because its leaders are severely critical of Europe’s anti-Israeli left, as shown in Bernard-Henri Levy’s Left in Dark Times and Alain Finkielkraut’s The Defeat of Reason.

There are those on the European (and sometimes on the American) left that have moved into a simplistic, black-and-white worldview governed by what I call SLES, short for “Standard Left Explanatory System.” SLES is a remainder of the guilt that many Europeans feel about their colonial past. Its algorithm is very simple: always support the underdog, particularly if non-Western. If the underdog behaves immorally (9/11; 7/7; Hamas hiding weaponry and fighters in civilian buildings), always accuse the West, and preferably Jews, for having pushed them to do this. Never demand non-Western groups to take responsibility for their actions, but instead masochistically look for ways to make the West responsible.

The new Jewish Liberal voice refuses to give in to the pressures of the Jewish right to support Israel’s actions when if they are wrong-headed, immoral and destructive. It is critical of Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinians territories after 43 years, and condemns the ongoing settlement construction.

At the same time it refuses, adamantly, to cave in to the masochistic tendency of SLES to look for Western culprits only, and systematically exposes anti-Semitic undercurrents in some of the anti-Israeli rhetoric. It strongly supports Palestinians’ right to a state of their own in which they can live in dignity and freedom, but it doesn’t let them off the hook for their dreadful mistakes, starting with the rejection of the UN partition agreement in 1947 and ending with electing the explicitly anti-Semitic Hamas into power in 2005.

It firmly believes that respecting Palestinians means to hold them responsible for their actions and consistently unmasks the tendency of the Arab world to accuse Israel of its own shortcomings and backwardness; and it never loses sight of the dangers in radical Islam, while seeking cooperation with moderate and progressive Arabs and Muslims.

The new Jewish Liberals are characterized by what philosopher Susan Neiman, in a wonderful book has called Moral Clarity: a combination of moral principles that are not to be compromised combined with insistence that reason rather than religious belief or dogmatic ideology must be the guide in making up our minds on questions of fact.

I predict the new Jewish liberal voice will become the predominant presence in Jewish discourse and politics of the Diaspora. Having suffered from irrational and evil persecution, prejudice and hatred, we Jews know how important the principles of Liberalism are, and it is time for us to apply them everywhere, and of course, first and foremost, in Israel.

It is now time for Israel’s liberals, who all but disappeared politically and have left public space except for a few enclaves to the right, to pick up the lead of the Diaspora, to make our voices forcefully heard. While being intransigent in opposing Israel’s occupation, the expansion of settlement and the disenfranchisement of Israeli Arabs, we must not fall into the trap of SLES. We must make clear to the electorate, that we do not just see Palestinians as victims, but as partners to be held responsible for their actions.

We must no longer let the likes of Avigdor Lieberman, whose worldview is illiberal, be the face of our country to the world. While holding the memory of the Holocaust sacred, we must refuse its politicization by Lieberman and Benjamin Netanyahu. While not blinding ourselves to the dangers of Islamic radicalism and Iran’s striving for hegemony, we must reject the fear-mongering of the right that has no positive message and no vision for Israel’s future.

Netanyahu has said to his Likud Party that they are supposed to be liberal and democratic. We must hold him to his word and demand that he drop his illiberal coalition partners, and form a government truly committed to liberal principles, with Kadima and Labor as his main partners. And we must demand of the Labor party to finally live up to its values, and pressure Netanyahu to move Israel towards moral clarity that is at the core of the Jewish Liberal vision.

Continue reading May 3, 2010

May 2, 2010

EDITOR: Storm Clouds Gather Around Continuous Israeli Intransigence

More and more are now declaring their stand against Israeli atrocities: countries, organisations, companies and individual artists and intellectuals, with many more under moral and political pressure to join the movement to end Israeli Apartheid, occupation and injustice. This week, Gil Scott-Heron was only the latest artist to announce that he will not play in Israel. Now Volvo and Caterpillar are under intense pressure to stop trading with Israel. 3000 European Jewish intellectuals called today on the European Parliament to stop supporting Israel automatically, and UC student Governors have called upon the university to disinvest from Israeli companies and other trading or supporting the occupation. The international pressure is building up against Israeli atrocities, and is likely to further intensify; the US is reportedly acting towards passing a UN resolution towards a nuclear-free Middle East, something Israel will fight tooth and nail against, as they would against any of Obama’s limp attempts to bring about the defunct two-state solution.

While this is all excellent news, it is really a very dangerous moment; Israel is now preparing its response to this pressure, and it is the normative one – a military strike of enormous damage and destruction, against the ‘usual suspects’. Currently, the targets discussed are Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and now also Iran. While such a reaction to political pressure sounds (and is) criminally misguided, it is the only type of reaction Israel is used to, and is apt at, or feels secure with. The time of great danger is upon us.

Caterpillar equipment used in extrajudicial killing near Hebron: The Electronic Intifada

Press release, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 29 April 2010

The following press release was issued by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights on 26 April 2010:

On Monday 26 April 2010, Israeli occupation forces killed a Palestinian man, Ali Ismael Ali Swaiti, 45, in Beit Awwa in the West Bank district of Hebron, after demolishing a house while he was inside. Israeli occupation forces claim that Ali Swaiti had been wanted for several years. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns this crime — which constitutes an extrajudicial execution — and calls upon the international community to work towards bringing to trial those Israeli politicians and commanders suspected of committing war crimes.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR and eyewitness testimony, Israeli occupation forces entered Beit Awwa town in the far south of Hebron at approximately 3:00am on Monday 26 April 2010, supported by military armored vehicles, a bulldozer and a Caterpillar digging vehicle. Israeli forces surrounded the house in which Ali Swaiti was located, using sound bombs. The home belongs to Mahmoud Abdul Aziz Swaiti and is located in Khellet al-Foulah, in the north of the town. During the operation, Israeli soldiers broke into numerous other houses in the area and turned them into observation points and firing posts.

After some minutes, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) evacuated at gunpoint the family living in the targeted one-story house as well as a family living in another two-story house, which belongs to the family of Ahmed Abdul Aziz Swaiti. The two families were detained outdoors for some time before they were taken to an adjacent house belonging to Abdul Jalil Swaiti. They were detained there with other families, all of whom were interrogated regarding the whereabouts of the targeted person.

At approximately 5:40am, an Israeli bulldozer began to destroy the fences surrounding the targeted house. It progressed towards the house and started to demolish it, but it retreated as it was fired at from inside the house. Israeli forces stationed in the neighboring houses opened fire at the house for 15 minutes from all sides before an explosion took place inside the house. Residents of the area reported that the explosion resulted from the shelling of the house.

At approximately 6:00am, the Caterpillar vehicle began to drive into and destroy the fences of the targeted house. After that, a digging vehicle continued demolishing the house, and then retreated to allow the renewed advance of the bulldozer and the search for the body of Swaiti.

At approximately 7:00am, the bulldozer lifted the body of Swaiti out of the rubble and dropped it onto a road close to the demolished house before moving it another 10 meters away. At approximately 7:30am, an Israeli soldier fired at least two shots at the body of Swaiti from a distance of three meters. At approximately 8:00am, Israeli occupation forces left the homes in which they had taken position.

In the meantime, Palestinian civilians had left their homes and many of them hurried towards the area of the attack. They carried Swaiti’s body to take it indoors. However, some people clashed with Israeli forces as they withdrew. Israeli occupation forces fired at those people using rubber-coated metal bullets, wounding five Palestinians including a boy and a young woman. The wounded are as follows:

1. Mohammed Mahmoud Masalmah, 23, wounded by a bullet to the head;
2. Baha Mohammed Akimi al-Amareen, 20, wounded by two bullets to the legs;
3. Hussein Yusuf Swaiti, 18, wounded by a bullet to the leg;
4. Hammam Ismael Masalmah, 17, wounded by two bullets to the legs; and
5. Asma Murshed Swaiti, 19, wounded by a bullet to the right shoulder.

The IOF spokesperson said that Swaiti had been wanted by the Israeli Security Service for eight years, as he was held responsible for carrying out a number of shooting attacks against Israeli targets near Hebron, including opening fire near the Ethna-Tarqumiya intersection on 26 April 2004, i.e. exactly six years prior to yesterday’s killing of Swaiti. The said attack resulted in the death of an Israeli soldier and the injury of two others.

PCHR reiterates its condemnation of such acts and:

1. Confirms that this act constitutes part of a pattern of Israeli war crimes perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), which reflect Israeli occupation forces disregard for the lives of Palestinians and for the requirements of international law.

2. Reiterates its condemnation of the illegal policy of extrajudicial executions carried out by IOF against Palestinian activists. It also confirms that this policy raises tension in the area and increases the likelihood of civilian victims among the Palestinian population.

3. Calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to stop these crimes which constitute violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.

4. Calls upon the international community, particularly the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to fulfill their obligations under Article 1 of the Convention to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances, and their obligation under Article 146 to search for and prosecute those responsible for committing grave breaches of the Convention. PCHR also calls on the High Contracting Parties to uphold their responsibilities as signatories to the protocol Additional to the Convention, such as breaches, which constitute war crimes according to Article 147 of the convention.

3,000 European Jewish intellectuals urge end to Israeli settlements: Haaretz

A new leftist European Jewish group, JCall, has written a letter to be delivered Sunday to the European Parliament calling for a cessation of what it calls systematic support for Israeli government decisions.
JCall, which describes itself as “the European J Street” and is to be officially launched Sunday with the presentation of the letter, has raised a storm with its call to stop construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem.
The letter is signed by some 3,000 Jewish intellectuals, among them philosophers Bernard Henri-Levy and Alain Finkielkraut, considered some of Israel’s strongest defenders among French intellectuals. Signatories also include Daniel Cohn-Bendit, leader of the student protests in the 1960s and now a member of the European Parliament, as well as other Jewish members of the European Parliament.

The letter calls occupation and settlements “morally and politically wrong,” noting that they “feed the unacceptable delegitimization process that Israel currently faces abroad.”
According to Prof. Zeev Sternhell, “The French Jewish left has decided that the official institutions do not represent most French Jews, and following the example of J Street, have decided that the time has come to do the same thing in Europe.” He supports the letter but hasn’t signed it.

Richard Prasquier, the chairman of CRIF, the committee representing French Jewish organizations, harshly criticized the document, saying that the petition will serve Israel’s enemies.
The document calls on the European Union and the United States to pressure both parties “and help them achieve a reasonable and rapid solution to the Israeli-Palestine conflict.”
It says that systematic support of Israeli government policy is dangerous.

Meanwhile, Israel has repeatedly protested that the PA is using money from donor countries to promote a ban on products from the settlements.
A second meeting of the Knesset Economics Committee on the matter is to take place today. In the first meeting, Foreign Ministry official Yael Rabia-Tzadok told the MKs that the campaign to confiscate goods manufactured in settlements has moved ahead since the new economics minister in the PA government has taken office, Hassan Abu-Labda. She said PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad supports the campaign

Volvo equipment: Israel’s weapons to destroy al-Walaja homes: The Electronic Intifada

Adri Nieuwhof, 29 April 2010

Palestinians in al-Walaja demonstrate against Israel's wall.

On 16 April, approximately 100 Palestinian villagers and internationals walked towards the construction site of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank village of al-Walaja, four kilometers northwest of Bethlehem. When the protesters were leaving the village, four Israeli army jeeps and one police vehicle entered and surrounded a Palestinian home. At least 40 persons, including women and children, were trapped for two hours.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces raided several other homes, detaining three young men for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli forces. During the raids al-Walaja was closed off, and soldiers prevented the media from entering the area.

Six days later, Israeli bulldozers were working full speed deeper inside the village’s lands, leaving destruction in their wake. Ma’an news agency reported that border guards and soldiers had imposed a curfew early in the morning. A cameraman was denied entry to the village by the army, according to representatives of the village’s Popular Committee.

The following day approximately 200 villagers, together with a few internationals, came together for yet another demonstration. They walked from the mosque, which has an Israeli-imposed demolition order against it, to the lands which were bulldozed the previous day. Standing on the bulldozed lands, representatives of the village held speeches calling for more demonstrations. Youths used boulders to block the road used by the Israeli bulldozer operators.

A day later, approximately 50 Palestinians and internationals managed to stop the work of the bulldozers for several hours. The Israeli soldiers had to violently drag the villagers away one by one.

History of injustices
The residents of al-Walaja have protested the confiscation and demolition of their property for many years. The Israeli settlements of Har Gilo and Gilo, established in the 1970s, are built on land confiscated from the village. While Israeli forces try to silence the protesters with harsh measures, Volvo and Caterpillar equipment is used by the Israeli forces in the illegal construction of the wall on the village’s land.

The old village of al-Walaja was occupied and destroyed by Zionist forces in October 1948 and its 1,200 Palestinian residents expelled. The 1948 Armistice line passed through the southern lands of the village and while most of the villagers fled to Jordan and Bethlehem, some villagers stayed on the lands of the village that were unoccupied at the time and eventually rebuilt a new town.

The remains of the old village of al-Walaja are two kilometers outside the new town, on the western side of the armistice line between Israel and the West Bank. According to Palestinian historian Walid Khalidi, a few stone houses still stand on the old village site. Today the old village of al-Walaja is used by Israeli settlers for picnicking and bathing.

Following the June 1967 war, Israel annexed the rest of al-Walaja’s lands, bringing them under the authority of the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem municipality. The villagers did not receive the right to live in Jerusalem, however, and they live under constant threat of expulsion. And while the villagers of al-Walaja are not allowed to build on their own lands, the settlement of Har Gilo is expanding.

After the Oslo accords of 1993, al-Walaja was designated “Area C,” giving Israel full military and administrative control. As a consequence, villagers who want to build a house on their own land have to ask permission from Israel. Israel denied 94 percent of the building permit requests of Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank from 2000 to 2007, according to Peace Now.

Villagers are facing increased pressure from the Israeli occupation forces to leave their land. The wall which is currently under construction will surround the village from all sides, isolating the villagers completely from their land, East Jerusalem and the old village.

Volvo equipment destroying homes
At the end of the 1980s Israel started to demolish Palestinian homes in al-Walaja and residents had to pay fines for their “illegally”-built homes. Since the outbreak of the second Palestinian intifada, Israeli forces demolished more than 24 houses in the village, according to the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem.

On 18 March two house owners in al-Walaja found military orders in Hebrew on the front doors of their homes. The orders concern the demolition of the two houses because they are located too close to the path along which the wall will be built. The following day, volunteers from the Stop the Wall Campaign, the YMCA and other international volunteers gathered with the owners of the houses under demolition in order to show their solidarity.

ActiveStills photographer Anne Paq witnessed Volvo equipment being used to destroy a home in the nearby village of al-Khader. Two days earlier she had taken pictures of Volvo and Caterpillar equipment working between the road and the fence of Har Gilo settlement, just a few meters away from Palestinian houses in al-Walaja. There was an Israeli police car parked next to the works. When Paq asked what they were building, they refused to answer.

Two years ago The Electronic Intifada first reported the use of Volvo equipment in Israel’s violations of international law in the occupied West Bank. So far the company has taken no action to investigate the use of its equipment in Israeli violations of Palestinian rights.
Volvo Group’s vice president of media relations and corporate news, Marten Wikforss, wrote in response to The Electronic Intifada’s report: “we do not have any control over the use of our products, other than to affirm in our business activities a Code of Conduct that decries unethical behavior.”

While the villagers of al-Walaja steadfastly continue their protest against the construction of the wall, the confiscation of their land and the destruction of their property, Israeli forces are increasing the oppression. Some houses have been rebuilt three or four times. Director of the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the East Jerusalem YMCA and YWCA, Nidal Abu Zuluf, explained: “Israel’s current repressive policies aim to prevent acts of popular resistance. They don’t want the media and internationals to be around.”
Perhaps neither does Volvo, as its equipment continues to be photographed destroying Palestinian homes and violating Palestinian rights.

Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate based in Switzerland.

Continue reading May 2, 2010

May 1, 2010

Aprtheid, by Carlos Latuff

Ran HaCohen, Israel, a New Decade: Antiwar

By Ran HaCohen, Antiwar.com – 10 April 2010

I turn on the television just before dinner. Prime-time. An Israeli series: “The Pilots’ Wives” (“Meet the Women behind Our Heroes”, said the promo), interrupted occasionally by a commercial depicting a soldier missing his mother’s soup (“disclaimer: the actor is not a soldier”). After the series, a short public service broadcast showing a group of young men, each in turn boasting his military service, until they notice one of them – a violent zoom-in – keeps quiet; the message is clear. Then the news, with at least one public relations item pushed by the military: “teen-age girls eager to become fighters”, “a remote-control watch-and-shoot system on the Gaza fence”, “a unique glimpse into a top-secret air-force base” or the like. Not to mention the real news, be it about the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Iran, or even the billions of terrorists disguised as miserable African refugees allegedly waiting on the Egyptian border to inundate Israel: all these issues, and many more, are predominantly managed and framed by the military.
The military service has been made a major issue in Israeli public discourse. Not that the army is short of soldiers: on the contrary, the number of recruits requesting “to serve their country” in combat units is at record level. Nevertheless, uniting the nation around the military as the ultimate good is a goal in itself, especially when it implicitly excludes the Israeli-Palestinians, who are not conscripted. Thus the stage and screen actor Itay Tiran was removed from Israel’s official propaganda website when someone noticed he had not served; And, following the Zeitgeist, “national left-wing” playwright Shmuel Hasfari said he would refuse to work with Tiran “just like with any murderer or rapist.”
Most Israeli artists are careful not to express themselves critically about Israel’s policies, definitely not to say a word against the country’s deep militarism and racism; Scander Kobti, co-director of Ajami, nominated for an Academy Award in Best Foreign Language Film, caused a scandal just for saying he didn’t “represent Israel” in Hollywood (“I cannot represent a state that doesn’t represent me”, the Israeli-Palestinian claimed) – even that is more than the selectively sensitive Israeli ear can bear. Every Israeli is expected to be an ambassador abroad – no wonder that in a highly popular Israeli reality show just a few years ago, candidates competed on who would best represent Israeli propaganda abroad (a former Israeli army spokesman was among the judges). Remember it next time you talk to an Israeli: especially outside Israel, you might hear not the truth, but the official state propaganda. Though many Israelis sincerely believe the two are identical.
The deep racism of the Israeli psyche is on the rise. The 1990s, at least in hindsight, marked some liberalization of the public discourse; the first decade of this century crushed it, and now the mildly critical, left-liberal discourse hardly exists in the mainstream. No wonder the liberal left has just 3 seats out of 120 in the Knesset; all the other parties are various shades of right-wing, far right, or fascism (except the small outcast “Arab” parties). The racist mindset can be observed in the most trivial daily situations, like my elderly neighbor, when told I saw someone peeping at my window the other night, instinctively reacting with a single question: “Have you seen whether it was a Jew or an Arab?”
Ever more often, when I mention the Netherlands, I am told that all the Dutch were anti-Semitic and collaborated with the Nazis; my already ritualized reaction – that my grandparents and my mother owe their lives to Dutch Christians who risked their own lives to save them – is met with a shrug, expressing something like “don’t challenge my precious prejudice” or “don’t be so naïve, we all know everybody hates us.” And this is not just the case of Holland: from Sweden to Ethiopia, from Turkey to Argentina, no matter how Jewish-friendly (and Israel-friendly) a nation has been historically, Israelis are encouraged to view all non-Jews (“Goyim” is the pejorative term used uncritically by most Hebrew speakers) as inherently anti-Semitic and therefore anti-Israeli. Every criticism of Israel’s policy is automatically dismissed as yet another incarnation of an endemic, incurable hatred of Jews. Just like anti-communism was the national religion of the USA during the Cold War, the fanatic belief in an eternal world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy is the true national cult of Israel. The voices portraying even President Obama as anti-Semitic are just one undertone in an ear-deafening choir of incitement against every dissenting voice, within or without.
The younger generation knows little else. How could it? As the Jerusalem Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan shows, Israeli schoolbooks – their text, maps, and pictures – are inherently racist, especially against Arabs; but whereas the racism was sophisticatedly disguised in the 1990s schoolbooks, in the last decade it’s overt and explicit. Arabs are consistently represented as primitive, threatening, and untrustworthy; the Palestinian narrative is either distorted and denied, or simply ignored. The Occupation, says Peled-Elhanan, is never mentioned, the Green Line does not exist; many Israelis no longer know what it means, let alone where it is.
Even the language retreats: if the term “occupied territories” sounded rather neutral just a few years ago, when even Ariel Sharon used the term “occupation”, now the sickening euphemism “liberated territories” has made a comeback. At the same time, hypocrisy and double-standards are cultivated: right-wing parties outside Israel are regularly termed “extremist”, “xenophobic” or “racist”, terms never applied to much more extreme Israeli parties. Official Israel is shocked and outraged by naming a street in Ramallah after a Palestinian terrorist Ayyash (assassinated by Israel in 1996); At the same time, the Israeli far-right leader Ze’evi (assassinated by Palestinians in 2001), whose main political platform was ethnic cleansing (“transfer”) of all Palestinians, has several streets, three promenades, two settlements, a highway, a bridge, and an army base named after him, and a law to commemorate him and even educate future generations with his “legacy.”
Is It Too Late?
This is the present atmosphere in Israel – one of a rising, violent nationalist self-righteousness, especially among the younger generation. A recent poll shows that while 35% of Israelis over the age of 30 said they would vote for right-wing parties, this number almost doubled for youths up to the age of 29, and stood at 61%.
Does this mean there is no chance for peace? A difficult question. Despite all of the above, polls also show 60% support among the general public for removing the majority of settlements. As always, this 60% majority of Israeli Jews overwhelmingly believes it is a minority – only a third of respondents said such an evacuation had the support of the Israeli majority. This last figure – the majority being persuaded it is actually a minority – is one of the greatest achievements of the official Israeli brain-wash, and has been consistent for many years.
One can therefore understand Zeev Sternhell’s call on Obama’s Washington to implement an imposed solution: “Were Israeli society prepared to pay the price for peace, its government would not be fanning the flames of conflict […] The conclusion is that […] the only solution is an imposed one”, writes the prominent Israeli political scientist. This is no rosy scenario either, needless to say. In clear imitation of Nazi calls to try the German politicians who signed the “humiliating” Treaty of Versailles (1919), the Israeli right-wing has already demanded to “put Oslo criminals on trial” for signing the Oslo Accords. One can recall European history and imagine how Israeli fascists would react to an “imposed peace.” Luckily, they are just a minority; but given the current atmosphere in Israel, as well as the demographic advantage of the right-wing (Orthodox Jews have much more children), it might not remain a minority for long. Time, if there still is any, is running out.

EDITOR: Another success for the BDS camp!

Gil Scott-Heron has at last joined those who boycott Israel, and refuses to go and sing there. He joins tens of committed artists, who, unlike Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen, have chosen to takea moral, political stand on Israel and its barbaric occupation of Palestine.

Gil Scott-Heron boycotts Tel Aviv, sends powerful message to Israelis: The Only Democracy?

April 30th, 2010, by Jesse Bacon
By Noam Sheizaf
This is a translation of my article regarding the cancellation of spoken words artist Gil-Scott Heron’s gig in Tel Aviv. His show was scheduled for late May, but it was later removed from Scot-Heron’s site and though there was no official statement yet, it seems to have been canceled for political reasons.
The original Hebrew version of the article was posted Wednesday on the web magazine The Other.
A small commotion erupted this week among the public that appreciates black music in Israel upon learning that ground-breaking artist, poet and musician, Gil Scott-Heron apparently canceled his Tel Aviv show for political reasons. There was no official statement; However, following protests of some of his pro-Palestinian fans during a show in London on the weekend, Scott-Heron announced from the stage that he would not be coming to Israel. The show, planed for May 25, was removed from the line up on his site.
Scott-Heron is a political man. He came out against US presidents, preached against nuclear energy, and asked the new generation of Hip-Hop artists to write meaningful lyrics rather than merely attach words to music. His most famous piece, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” is considered the anthem of alternative culture. I assume these and similar reasons made Scott-Heron appeal to a couple of hundred Israelis. The only surprise is their ability to make a U-turn the moment that protest was directed at us.
In the last few days, Israelis who awaited the show in Tel Aviv filled Scott Heron’s website and Facebook pages dedicated to the issue with angry comments. The arguments were of the type common to such occurrences: one shouldn’t mix music and politics (”music brings people together; politics pulls them apart”); one must distinguish between the government of Israel and the citizens; it is hypocrisy and double standards to boycott Israel when there are so many more horrible governments and deadlier regimes in the world.
But beyond the usual arguments, an offended tone sneaked in: “Why should we, music lovers, who love GSH also because of the place we live in, should be blamed for the occupation or apartheid?” writes one Israeli on Facebook, and added elsewhere, “to cancel the show, it is to spit in the face of the leftists in the crowd.”
“In Israel there is a true music scene,” comments another Israeli on Scott Heron’s site. “For me, music represents peace and love, not war and hate. If you come to Israel you will see it with your own eyes”. Avi Pitshon wrote in Haaretz in relation to a similar incident, in which a few Israelis joined a call to the Pixies and Metallica to skip playing in Israel, “the radical left cannot hurt the powerful, those who shape policy, and is therefore trying to hit whoever is under the spotlight: music loving citizens.”
It seems that what hurts Pitshon and the other Israelis most is not the anti-Israeli stance of Scott Heron and others like him, but the choice to specifically boycott them, the public who is for peace, loves Soul and Hip-Hop, and sees itself more in touch with Detroit and Chicago than the Tomb of Rachel and Elkana. After all, the voice of these embittered music lovers didn’t rise when a pretty effective boycott was organized in the EU against produce from the settlements: the settlers are the bad guys in this story. But to boycott us, us who took part in three Peace Now demonstrations and two events commemorating Rabin? What is the world coming to?
The Israeli left (and yours truly included) is deeply longing to be part of some global communion. People here imagine themselves through American culture, Italian cuisine and French novels, as if we were born to a bourgeois family on Paris’ Left Bank and our life project is to confront the feelings of alienation inherent in human existence. Tel Aviv and its suburbs are arranged with their face towards the West and a wall separating their back from all the turmoil in the East: the settlers in the territories, the Ultra-Orthodox in Jerusalem, and also these Palestinians. The occupation is such a boring and tedious story, the making of a stupid government and wicked right-wingers. Clearly, we are not part of this madness.
A worldview so detached leads to many disappointments. So we are shocked to discover that the Palestinians hate us just as much as the hate the right-wingers, we are insulted when the reception clerk in a Spanish hotel lets a curse out behind our back, and cannot understand why an old rapper, who has seen a few things in his life, would tell us that, on second thought, Tel Aviv doesn’t suit him right now. What the hell? We blow a fuse. What’s the connection between the Barbie Club [a Tel Aviv nightclub] and the territories? After all, they are at least a 20 minutes car ride away!
To the credit of the Israeli Right one should say that it is much more consistent and well argued. From the Right’s perspective, these conflicts with the world are the price for our clinging to parts of our historical homeland and our survival in a hostile region. The Right doesn’t try to evade taking responsibility for sitting on top of Palestinians, and if someone, whether Obama or Scott Heron, doesn’t like it, there is no choice but to bite the bullet.
In contrast, “the enlightened camp” is busy with the endless theatrical performance of their moral difficulties, whose real purpose is to create a barrier between them and all those action for which they refuse to take responsibility. Thus, when the order arrives, the leftist climbs into the tank without a second thought, but later he will do an anguished film about it for the Cannes festival. Thus the obsessive persecution of settlers. Thus Tel Aviv behaves as if it were a Mediterranean suburb of London while in a spitting distance from it eastward and southward lies an immense jail holding millions of people without rights for over half a century.
The self-pity tops itself with the absurd claim that such cancellations will benefit the occupation, because they would discourage those most in favor of two states solution. As if the role the world is to caress Tel Aviv’s residents’ back until they draw the courage and convince the right, to please stop building villas on the hills of Samaria and abstain from kicking Palestinians out of their houses in East Jerusalem. Beyond the fact that this method has been completely discredited by history–the Israeli Left doesn’t even convince itself anymore–the theory doesn’t hold water: excited or depressed, these thousands of peace and love and music lovers do not show up in Bil’in or Sheikh Jarrah, whereas the few dozens of human rights activists who do go there are begging the world for a little international pressure to save Israel from itself.
A few years ago, the dynamics surrounding Roger Waters (ex Pink Floyd) visit’s to Israel recalls somewhat the current case. Waters didn’t boycott, but he said a few words about peace and ending the occupation. Immediately, a few of the “enlightened camp” ordered him to focus on the guitar and stop lecturing us. There is something really bizarre with our ability to sing about another brick in the wall while forgetting about the miserable Farmers whose fields are behind our wall. (As it is hard to understand Israelis who return from Berlin with “an original stone from the wall” when the improved local version stands for free in our living room.) Considering the deep disconnect between the Israelis and the protest anthems that they are humming, it seems that Scott-Heron did us a favor by reminding us that in a place where pregnant women give birth at checkpoints and people are locked in their houses, even music doesn’t cross borders.

Continue reading May 1, 2010